When it comes to entrepreneurship in Brazil, a dangerously romanticized illusion still persists: that passion, courage, and persistence are enough to make a business thrive. In practice, however, the reality is harsher. According to Sebrae, 50% of businesses close their doors within the first five years of operation. This means that, for many, failure is not a remote possibility but a common outcome. The problem is that most entrepreneurs are not prepared to deal with it productively.
In a country lacking formal education focused on business management, it is common for entrepreneurs to begin their journeys with limited knowledge about strategic planning, leadership, or business modeling. Many still confuse a good idea with a viable plan. And when execution does not yield the expected results, the feeling of failure settles in as a definitive sentence.
But what if failure wasn’t the end? What if it were, in fact, the first stage of business maturity? Making mistakes is inevitable. Persisting in them is optional. Failure, when properly understood, becomes a powerful tool for learning and repositioning. However, for this to happen, a shift in mindset is needed. One must move from being a victim of circumstances to taking on the role of the protagonist in their own growth.
Businesses don’t fail just due to lack of sales or capital. They collapse due to lack of clarity, direction, and structured leadership. Most fatal mistakes are linked to the absence of strategy: fragile positioning, misguided metrics, decisions made on the fly, and management focused solely on operations.
Harvard Business Review classifies a company’s lifecycle into five stages: existence, survival, success, bureaucratization, and maturity. Each phase demands different skills from the leader. And often, what took the business to a certain point is precisely what prevents it from growing further. What was courage turns into rigidity. What was total involvement becomes dependence. What was agility converts into chaos.
In this context, failure can be the clearest sign that it’s time to change. To stop trying to ‘do more’ and start ‘thinking better.’ To step off autopilot and adopt a more strategic posture.
But this can’t be done alone. The entrepreneur who believes they must solve everything on their own is doomed to repeat their mistakes with greater sophistication. The key to turning things around lies in seeking environments that challenge their way of thinking. Advisory boards, structured masterminds, specialized mentorships, and deep diagnostics help identify the blind spots hindering growth.
Often, the problem isn’t the team, the market, or the competition. It’s the mindset that still governs decisions. It’s common to find entrepreneurs with high revenue but low profitability. With a heavy workload but no time to think. Proud of their brand but fearful of the future. This reveals management operating at its limits, sustained by personal effort rather than structure.
Business maturity begins when the leader understands it’s not about working harder but working smarter. When they allow themselves to step out of urgency and into strategy. When they stop seeking miraculous solutions and start building systems that sustain consistent growth.
For this, it’s essential to develop three pillars: clarity, structure, and connection. Clarity about where you are and where you want to go. Structure so the business can operate autonomously. And connection with other leaders who have overcome similar challenges and can accelerate your learning curve.
There is no mature company with an immature leader. And immaturity, in this case, has nothing to do with age or time in the market but with the ability to reflect, reposition, and build legacies—not just revenue.
Failure doesn’t need to be feared. It needs to be understood. It shows the limits of the current model. It reveals that what brought you here won’t take you further. Instead of being hidden, it should be used as fuel to redesign a new cycle.
Every company that is now a reference has gone through moments of instability. What sets them apart is that, at some point in their journey, their leaders decided to stop operating on the fly and began building with awareness. They moved from being firefighters to becoming architects of growth.
Therefore, if you’re going through a tough period, perhaps what’s missing isn’t effort. It’s direction. It’s the courage to think differently. Because businesses that grow with structure don’t depend on luck—they depend on method.
